A Very Different Sort Of Day
by TheoreticallyEva
Summary: Just a lighthearted one-shot with mild Royai undertones--though they don't have to interpreted as such--in case you need a smile today. :3


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**Just a one-shot I threw together to take a break from working on my more extensive and rigorous writing project (which I refuse to begin posting until it's finished). It made me smile to write it, and I hope it makes other people smile, too! :D It sort of popped into my head a few days back when I had to deal with taking a cold shower because my brother stole all the hot water. XD Those darn brothers and their hot shower-taking tendencies.... -shakes fist- Anyway, this is nothing really serious, but it has some useful optimism in it, and as always, I welcome not only reviews, but constructive criticism of any sort. Especially since I am less confident in my ability to write for Roy and Riza than I am in my ability to write for other characters, even though I do enjoy this pair.  
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**I was keeping count of the all the things that made this day rare or--as the title so slyly suggests--different! It was fun. But I suppose it stands to reason that people who are as "different" from the norm of the military as Roy Mustang and his crew are would have such "different" days every so often.  
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**Oh, yeah. And I disclaim everything. The end.**

**P.S. WHYYYYYY does this site _insist_ on ruining my formatting?! Grarrrrrrgh, and other such irritated noises....  
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**A Very Different Sort Of Day**

It was one of those rare nights when Mustang had finished all his paperwork with hardly a hint of complaint, remaining silent for the majority of the day. One of those rare nights when Hawkeye walked into his office when it was normally time to leave and halted mid-step upon seeing him slumped over his desk, forehead in his palms, fingers intertwined in his dark bangs. A rare night, indeed, when Hawkeye touched him lightly on the shoulder to break him out of his staring at the bare wood before him and suggested that they walk home together this time.

The moon was full, a pearl hanging on a necklace of stars, glowing like the cheeks of a lovestruck girl, a marvelous sight they had not seen in months. Still, neither the colonel nor the woman whom he personally claimed to be "one of his dearest subordinates" commented on the sky above them, or anything else, for that matter. For a while, they hardly even looked at each other. Hawkeye walked steadily, rhythmically, her hands clasped loosely on her bag, her gaze focused straight ahead, a mien completely devoid of concern. Her companion's gait was less collected, often randomly switching from long intervals between steps to a series of short ones, and his head rarely stayed facing ahead of him for long. Though his hands remained still in his pockets, his eyes kept wandering, usually studying anything but the notably calmer lieutenant.

Hawkeye waited for Mustang to burst out with what was plaguing his mind, starting in mid-sentence as though he had been talking with her about all day—she was quite accustomed to such outbursts by this time, especially on these occasional days when he exhibited a greater amount of mental pressure than usual—but he remained silent far longer than she thought he would. She glanced at him once, then looked away. At length, she glanced at him again.

He sighed. She sighed. She gave in.

"What seems to be the matter tonight, Colonel?"

Instead of answering at first, he just turned his head slowly toward the ground in front of them. Glancing again, she smiled a little to herself when she saw he looked rather like his younger self, the boy apprentice she'd known at her father's house, who would sometimes think too much.

"Lieutenant," Mustang finally addressed her. "Do you think that we can really do this?"

Not willing to play word games when it came to depression—even though she _did_ know what he meant—Hawkeye replied coolly, "Do what, sir? Walk home? I feel we actually have a high chance of succeeding at that."

Mustang scowled at her, and she felt relieved to see some of his zest return to his face. That face was not made for downheartedness. "You know what I mean," he said. "Let's say I really _do_ become Fuhrer—do you really think that geometric progression will work?"

"Yes," Hawkeye responded without hesitation.

Mustang whipped his head to stare at her almost sullenly. "How can you be so confident?"

The lieutenant considered her answer carefully without letting her deliberation show on her face. Finally, she shrugged. "I truly do believe it could work. It makes a great deal of sense. But perhaps, Colonel, what you need to remember is that regardless of whether it works or not, it must at least be attempted. The system we have now is no good, and new ideas with better intentions must be allowed to be implemented. If we fail, at least we will all have learned something important that we needed to know. In other words, Colonel, no matter what happens, we succeed."

She felt his eyes linger on her so long that she had to fight her blood from rising to her cheeks. It helped when she refused to meet his gaze.

At last, he looked away, and from her peripheral vision, she saw him scratch the back of his neck restlessly. "I know you're right. But the whole point of this is to make sure nothing like Ishbal ever happens again. And things like what happened to Hughes...." He trailed off. She allowed herself to look at him then, her heart sinking, prepared to offer comfort, but he continued before she could do so. "If I end up unable to protect anyone in the end, I.... I guess I'm not really sure how I would live with myself. I'm staking my whole life on this one belief. This is all I want to be able to do."

After a moment, Hawkeye nodded slowly. "Your dreams have always been noble, sir, and I commend you for them, and I encourage you to continue pursuing them," she said, a touch of softness in her tone. "But you already do far more good than you seem to think."

On an ordinary night, that would have made him smile appreciatively and say no more on the subject. Instead, he swung his torso from side to side with an "AUGH!!" He hadn't stopped walking as he moved his upper body so vehemently, causing him to almost lose his balance and fall over. Hawkeye instinctively grabbed his arm and kept him from stumbling into the street, her brows furrowing.

"But I want to do more!" he insisted, curling and then stiffening his fingers in front of him in a gesture of ardor. "It's not enough! What I do isn't enough. I _have_ to be able to feel like there's more I can do. And I can't stand thinking that maybe I'll get through all this only to find out that I once I had the power, I couldn't do anything at all."

"You are unusually vocal about your doubts tonight, sir," Hawkeye observed aloud, eyeing him with one eyebrow raised.

The colonel sighed, and for a moment, that's all he did. But then he turned his attention to Hawkeye and nodded at her. "I do thank you for your encouragement. I will, of course, continue to pursue my goal. It's really all I _can_ do right now anyway."

Hawkeye's lips pursed as she tried to formulate a response that would put him in more optimistic spirits, but the sound of barking distracted her. Very familiar barking. They were nearing her apartment, and Black Hayate was throwing a fit about something.

"Oh, no, he'll wake the neighbors," she muttered tersely as she hurried toward her door, struggling to dig out her keys from the bottom of her bag. Upon stepping into the apartment and turning on the lights, Hayate whirled around from his place on the kitchen floor, from which he had apparently been barking at the refrigerator. Hawkeye folded her arms at him, shooting him a stern look that put his tail between his legs. "And just _what_ are you making such a fuss about, Black Hayate?"

Rather than answer, the dog simply bounded into the living room and settled in a spot at the foot of her favorite armchair, laying his head on his front paws and gazing at her apologetically. Hawkeye shook her head and sighed.

"Well, Colonel," she turned to Mustang as she set her bag on the small dining table in the kitchen, "since you're here, would you like anything to eat?"

"Oh, no, I couldn't—" Mustang began, but he stopped short when Hawkeye opened a cupboard and was greeted by a cascade of corn flakes pouring out of a hole in a cereal box.

They both blinked in surprise. After registering the mess in her mind, Hawkeye plucked the cereal from the cupboard and studied the hole. It had neat half-circles all around its edges. She grimaced. "A rat."

"Ah," the colonel nodded. "That's probably what Hayate was barking at."

"Probably," Hawkeye agreed. She got down on her hands and knees to inspect the area underneath the refrigerator, and Mustang bent down to look as well. Each shifted and squinted, but Hawkeye finally murmured, "I can't see any openings from here," and Mustang affirmed it as well.

A growl from Hayate coupled with a rustle at the top of the refrigerator caught their attention. They glanced up to see a large, black, furry rodent with a sickeningly long ringed tail and bent whiskers gnawing at a bag of chips. It halted very suddenly when it noticed that they had noticed it.

There was a broom leaning in the corner of the wall near where Mustang stood. He slowly reached for it, not taking his attention from the rat, which watched his movements intently. Hayate's growl became deeper and fiercer. As soon as Mustang's hand touched the wooden handle of the broom, the rat leapt from the top of the refrigerator and scurried to a previously unseen hole at the bottom of the opposite wall. Hayate scrambled to his feet and ran barking into the kitchen, pawing with yelps of irritation at the place where the rat had disappeared. Mustang and Hawkeye kept a close eye around their immediate vicinity, the former clutching the broom, ready to bring it down at a moment's notice. Suddenly, Hayate's ears pricked up, and he peered around, eventually hurrying back to the refrigerator, but the rat emerged and ran under the dog's legs before it could be caught. Mustang jumped when the rat barreled toward him, swinging the broom desperately, barely missing it every time he thought he had it. When the rat sought sanctuary behind a vase, Mustang grit his teeth and, with a short war cry, gave a powerful horizontal swing that sent the vase to the ground to shatter into countless pieces, while the rat merely cringed from the shock of such a close call before scampering away again.

"Colonel!" Hawkeye snapped, face flushed with frustration. "Put the broom away! I'd rather you didn't break any more of my things."

"But we have to get it _somehow_!" Mustang snarled.

"It's fine," Hawkeye replied firmly, snatching the broom from him and putting it back in its place. "I'll just pick up some cyanide tomorrow."

"But that means you have to sleep with it _tonight_!" the colonel exclaimed.

Hawkeye tried to keep from rolling her eyes. "It's not a—"

"_There it is again_!!" Mustang cried, pointing toward yet another hole in the wall almost completely hidden behind the lower cupboards under the sink. Sure enough, the rat was just sniffing the air in hopes of finding it was safe. But it whipped its head toward Mustang's voice and, after a moment of hesitation, took off in the direction of the bathroom. "I'll handle this," the colonel grumbled through clenched teeth, yanking on his gloves.

Hawkeye actually gasped. "Colonel, don't you _dare_! This is my _apartment_!"

But her superior officer wasn't listening. He stormed into the bathroom and grinned wickedly at the rat cowering in a corner of the bathtub, fitting his fingers more snugly into the gloves.

"Tonight, little rat," he said in a low voice, "you shall see hell."

Hawkeye came rushing behind him, pleading with him to come to his senses. As she did so, the rat made another desperate attempt to escape by leaping out of the tub and under Mustang's legs. As he lunged forward to try and catch the rat before it could get away, his backside rammed into Hawkeye's gut, who—with a rather uncharacteristic "_oof_"—toppled on top of him, and the two of them fell headfirst into the tub.

Scrambling to turn themselves around, Hawkeye whirled her piercing gaze toward Mustang, her face redder than he'd ever seen it, fully intending to unleash a maelstrom of scoldings on him. But he had spotted the rat again, crouching and scrutinizing them from its place by the door of the bathroom. As he prepared to summon a flurry of flames with which to subject the rodent to a slow and excruciating death, his rising hand hit the bathtub's knob, and ice-cold water came rushing down on them, incurring yelps of shock.

For a while, they just sat there, dumbfounded and silent except for their panting, staring at the doorframe of the bathroom that no longer had a rat in it. At last, Roy reached up and knocked the knob to its "off" position. Then he stared in consternation at his wet gloves. Hawkeye glanced at him and almost laughed in spite of herself.

"Really, Colonel," she muttered as she awkwardly raised herself out of the bathtub. "You are useless."

Ignoring his indignant, flabbergasted expression, she stripped herself of her soaked military jacket, revealing only a white tank top, and shivered a little from the cold dampness of it as she draped the jacket over the towel rack. As she made to leave the bathroom, Hayate suddenly appeared in the doorframe, proudly sporting the rat still and bleeding in his jaws.

"Oh," Hawkeye said, apparently unable to keep from grinning as she patted the dog's head. "Good work, Black Hayate." She turned to the colonel, who still sat dejectedly in the tub, legs dangling over the side, and she was again reminded of that young apprentice she used to know, the one who once swore he would find a way to protect everyone. "I suppose I'll let Black Hayate outside to dispose of the rat," she told him. Then, leaving him there just like that, she directed the dog toward the front door.

Minutes later, she returned to the apartment, a gleeful Hayate dancing around her feet and immediately running toward his food bowl once he was back in the kitchen. Also in the kitchen was a very wet Flame Alchemist, sitting at the dining table, looking like the personification of a sigh.

For a moment, they stared at each other in silence. Then Hawkeye burst out laughing.

Mustang blinked at he almost annoyed. When Hawkeye settled down and had only a stubborn grin left, he looked at her and said with boyishly wide eyes and a boyishly hurt tone, "Useless?"

That got her laughing even harder than before. She doubled up and shut her eyes, opened her mouth and kept one hand on the dining table to retain her balance, and laughed.

"I'm not sure I see what's so funny," Mustang huffed.

"Your face," Hawkeye managed between gasps. "Y-Your _face_...."

Watching her, Mustang found a smirk slowly pasting itself across his lips. He settled back in his chair and continued watching with a full smile. "You haven't laughed like this in a long time."

As her laughter subsided, Hawkeye considered his observation. "I suppose there hasn't really been much reason to."

"What are you talking about?" Mustang replied, almost with a scoff. "We crack jokes in the office all the time."

Hawkeye shook her head. "None of you are as funny as you think you are." Before Mustang could dwell on feeling offended, she continued. "Anyway, there is always something serious to be thinking about. I suppose I generally feel I don't have time to worry about entertaining myself. There's too much to do, especially since we're working toward such a lofty goal."

Mustang frowned a little at that. "Well," he said. "I suppose that's true." He smirked sardonically and ran his fingers through his hair. "You're a lot stronger than I am."

The lieutenant felt her expression transition from one of deep amusement to one that was soft and full of the fondness she rarely let him see. When Mustang looked up to see it, she saw the creases in his forehead and chin slowly smooth themselves away.

"You already know that you cannot physically protect everyone," she said quietly. "That's why you came up with the idea of geometric progression. And you know that, fast as you are, a rat is faster." She couldn't help but give another small giggle at that, a sound that seemed to make the air tingle. "But there is more than one way to protect people, Colonel. In that way, you are always protecting me, and for that, I am grateful."

Gazing at her sincere, unflinching face, Mustang's lips gradually widened into a smile. After a moment, he directed it toward his hands as he began to slip off the soggy gloves he had forgotten he was still wearing.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," he finally said.

Hawkeye nodded, then sighed. "Well," she said brusquely, "would you like something to drink? Tea, perhaps?"

"Tea," Mustang mulled it over, leaning back in his chair again, closing his eyes serenely. "I haven't had a good cup of tea in a long time."

"Well, then, we should remedy that," Hawkeye said. "It's been a very.... _different_ sort of day, hasn't it?"


End file.
